Assessor-Candidate to Withdraw 14 Pages of Charges

San Bernardino County Assessor Don Williamson has withdrawn criminal allegations against his top opponent in Tuesday’s election, prompting prosecutors to announce Thursday that they would not launch an investigation.

In the latest twist in a bruising race, Williamson told the district attorney’s office this week that he would withdraw 14 pages of accusations against Supervisor Bill Postmus, including allegations that he had made staff cuts based on race and gender, and had tried to bribe the assessor into endorsing him.

The supervisor has denied all of those allegations.

“Without information from [Williamson], we’re facing a stone wall, so to speak,” said district attorney’s spokeswoman Susan Mickey.

In addition, prosecutors noted that some of the allegations appeared to be civil matters rather than criminal, and that most of the alleged incidents were relatively old, thus requiring Williamson’s help to investigate them.

Williamson said he had withdrawn the complaint “in the current spirit of cooperation” with supervisors and county administrators, with whom he had been wrangling over a blocked attempt to roll back taxes on 70,000 properties.

The board will decide Tuesday whether to grant Williamson money to hire outside counsel to explore the proposed rollback’s legality.

On Thursday, Postmus released a terse statement regarding what he called “bizarre, unfounded allegations.”

“The voters should see Williamson’s stunt for what it was -- an attempt to smear me with baseless accusations,” he said.